It happens to the best of us.
No worry's.

Dear Friends,

1. Today, the friend who had installed Ubuntu 13.04 on my machine earlier, worked with me;
2. We spent most of the day trying to install Ubuntu;
3. According to him, Ubuntu can only be installed in the same partition in which Windows Vista is residing to allow a dual boot;
4. He also insisted that Ubuntu can only be installed by running Wubi in Windows;
5. Moreover, he said that I have to expand the partition containing Vista;

I am confused even more now as point 4 above this is against what you suggested, Yancek.
Similarly, point 5 is exactly the opposite of what you recommended, Ztcoracat. Please do clarify?

Finally, Yancek and Ztcoracat, I have now understood the essentials of an Ubuntu install quite thoroughly. In this context, the links that you provided Yancek, were truly illuminating.

One circular issue presents itself: if I am to access Gparted, I must be in Ubuntu to begin with. However, given my repeated failure in the installation, how can I run Gparted?

Incidentally, I am learning quite a lot: I find the md5sum an excellent tool: I never knew that such a facility was needed and existed! I also did not know that outstanding documentation on Linux existed. Thanks to all of you, I now do! I am now determined to see this through.

Thank you all for all the trouble and efforts!

With Metta,

Malcolm

In all of this I hope you have a NTbackup with system state of your drive or have a clone of it. You don't want to wreck your install or data in this process.



#1. That was very nice of him to help you. I can't say enough positive things about a friend who will help.

#2. Bummer. Should not have taken that long but oh well.

#3,4. Not sure why he said that. I will respectfully disagree but YMMV.

WUBI is not used anymore by ubuntu. It was a sort of good feature, designed to allow new users try an easy way to install linux. It was a trick like zip slack or BeOS in the way that it used a single file on a windows filesystem. In that file held a virtual hard drive of linux. Some users liked it while others couldn't get it to work. To remove it the instructions said to use windows programs in control panel to remove it. Hopefully it would fix the loader issue and remove the associated files. If not, you'd have to manually correct this.

Since wubi was used to create a file in window's NTFS and it's not used any more we'd have to look for other ways to install linux. The most widespread way is to use windows to shrink it's partition. (if you have no room you can't shrink it) Then you install linux on to the free space.

Another way is to simply buy a fast usb drive either in flash or mechanical and load linux to it.

If you select the Vista stion and install Ubuntu to it it will remove your Vista partition and install Ubuntu.

I think what your friend is referring to is an extended partition.

When I installed Ubuntu I had to shrink my Windows XP partition in order to install Ubuntu alone side it. The installer extended the partition for me.
I created a 25 GB ext 4 / partition for Ubuntu and a 1 GB swap partition before I told the installer to save the changes and write to disk.

You can download gparted live and use that.
I use gparted live all of the time to delete or resize partitions.
Windows should have Disk Management to allow you to resize the partition.


W/O seeing all of the partitions on your HDD I can 't advise much more.

Unless I am mistaken I recall reading that your HDD is a 160 GB drive.
Vista's partition is most likely taking up a lot of the space on that drive.
If I could see the partitions on that drive I would be able to assist you better.

Make sure that you write down your Windows partitions so you don't by accident select one of them and overwrite it with Ubuntu.

Dear Friends,

Hi!

I am very sorry for the delay in replying.

1. Ubuntu now boots up from the USB drive, effortlessly. I think that when I ran WUBI, on my friend's advice, it deleted all the existing (and perhaps corrupted?) versions of Ubuntu;

2. I managed to access Gparted in Ubuntu;

3. Ztcoracat, I had no free space on my hard drive;

4. After much effort, I finally installed MiniTool Partition Wizard which allowed me to resize the disk. I now have Windows Vista 32 bit on partition C: of size 45 GB (unused 16 GB), a primary partition G: with unused memory of 33 GB, a logical partition D: of size 20 GB with 5 GB free (this contains my data files) and a final primary partition H: of size 51 GB with 51 GB free;

5. My questions: does it make any difference whether I install Ubuntu on a logical drive or on a primary drive?(I can change logical to primary and vice versa quite easily with this program);

6. I plan to install Ubuntu on H:. Please advise;

7. Strangely, when I partitioned the drive, Vista immediately gave me an error message saying "Windows has detected a hard disk problem
--> Start the backup process

--> Ask me again later"

This kept on repeating itself. Any idea why this happened? Is thus just a co-incidence?;

8. I finally found the error after running Sea Tools (THe Seagate Hard Disk Utility) for DOS (I have a Seagate 160 GB SATA disk of type ST3160215AS). I have a bad sector on my disk. Sea Tools recommends a low level format;

9. This is where I am at the present time: mulling over whether to do this format now itself or just install Ubuntu and wait for the system to crash. I already have backed up all the important files.

10. I am very confident now. I have learned an enormous lot over the past week. However, the time that I have spent in this process has been a lot. Hence, the delay;

11. I thank you most deeply for all the support: I really could not have reached this stage without your caring, insightful and warm advice. I am truly grateful and indebted to you;

12. I await your advice, suggestions and comments on the points raised herein, before taking my next steps.

With Metta,

Malcolm

No. You can install on a primary or logical partition.


You won't see "H" partition when you install Ubuntu. Linux drive names are different and will be sda with a number after it as sda1, sda2, etc. You should be able to determine which is the one your refer to as "H" by the size.

1 members found this post helpful.

The Ubuntu installer's partition manager will show you all of the partitions on your machine but like yancek said it won't say H.

If in fact you have 51 GB's of "free space" use that to create your 2 Ubuntu partitions.
-Create at least a 20 GB Ext 4 / journaling fs *(or you could make it 50 GB and use the 1 GB for swap)*
-Than create a 1 GB swap partition.

1 members found this post helpful.

If you low level format you will loose all data. All, as in all of it.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you!

1. Could you reply to point number 7 in my earlier post, please?

2. Do you recommend a low level format?

3. In lieu of 2 above, do you suggest the use of a program like 'spinrite' or 'hdd regenerator' instead?


I await your responses! Thank you.

With Metta and Gratitude,

Malcolm

The best thing to do is find out how bad the drive is. Problem is that any single 1 or 0 missing could be disaster.

Get the OEM's diag suite and run it to find out what is going on. Consider backup now.

If your OEM suite really does have a low level or you are on a real scsi drive then yes a low level might bring several more years to your hard drive. It was once common to run a low level but almost impossible now.

I'd think about a new drive after some testing.

A possible way to stop the loop may be to try to get to safe mode and run this fix at end. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/29...d-disk-problem

I think vista had a dvd that you could run some diags like checkdisk maybe too. I think almost any windows vista or above might be able to run a system check.

Thank you Jefro!

I will be buying a new hard disk by Tuesday.

Thank you again!

With Metta,

Malcolm

Dear Friends,

I am sorry for the long delay in replying.

I finally managed to install Ubuntu 15.04 successfully!

It works very well so far.

I am grateful to you all for your help. Thank you very much. The most difficult part of the installation was in allocating the \, swap and home areas during installation. Understanding the way to do this took up a lot of my time.

There also seems to be a link between partitioning a disk and the occurrence of hard disk failure errors! I will research this topic at some later point in time!

Thank you once again!

With Metta,

Malcolm

Thanks for the update.

??"
There also seems to be a link between partitioning a disk and the occurrence of hard disk failure errors! "??

There should not be.

Unfortunately linux is never tested at the factory. No one can predict what may happen to a computer. The millions of choices that code could run inside your hardware can't be guessed. Timings and firmware and quality of parts make the entire process less than reliable.